Winston/Conchita story panned by NYT

The film documentary about the rocky relationship between late photographer O. Winston Link and his thieving wife Conchita has finally made it to American shores. Yet the result, according to the New York Times at least, is not great film.

However, O. Winston Link did make great film. His nighttime photographs of steam trains chugging through Virginia and West Virginia have unleashed several books as well as an entire museum in downtown Roanoke. But his relationship with his wife suffered a major derailment.

As reported in the Hook two years ago when the museum opened, some associates of the late photo-artist contend that he was essentially held prisoner in his own house by a wife who took a lover– and thousands of her husband's priceless prints. In 1998, Conchita Mendoza Link was convicted of grand larceny in the first degree in New York and sentenced to six-and-a-half to 20 years.

Shortly after her 2002 release, investigators discovered she was selling more missing prints on eBay, and she went back to jail. Still, the New York Times reviewer, after watching Ã¢â?¬Ë?The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover’ infers that Conchita helped jumpstart her husband's standing in the art world.
Link died in January 2001. The Roanoke museum dedicated to his art opened three years later.